World Peace, For the Evening. Or something like that.

August 22, 2015

So I'm sitting in my favorite Starbucks at my favorite table for two with two of the small wooden chairs, shoved into the corner that has three sets of outlets. The two leather chairs that used to be here are gone. Corporate replaced them with chat chairs: shallow-but-wide-seated, cloth-covered seating meant for skinny white chicks to sit on the edge of and talk both at the same time, while they lean forward and wave one hand in time to their own words. Nice.

Actually, one leather chair is gone. Two weeks ago, a certain female customer Who Will Not Be Named told the men delivering the new chairs that her disability required a chair with arms (the new ones have none). So the workman put both leather chairs back where they were, picked up the chat chairs and put them back on the truck and drove away. When the coast was clear two days later, they came back, delivered the chat chairs and took one of the leather chairs away.

The remaining leather chair sits in exile in the opposite corner of the room near the door where my table was. It has its own sturdy-but-ugly concrete-topped square table– orange-with-gray-chips—right where you want to put your feet. If you sit in the chair, you are eye-level with the nearest table, about three feet away. No one will sit there if you are in the chair.

So, I'm sitting at my table in my Starbucks in the corner with the six outlets. Netbook is open and plugged in, my writing program at the ready. Earbuds in, listening to Mozart. Yeah, I upgraded from Eva Cassidy. My cell phone is plugged into the netbook, charging. Also open is a self-help book I'm reading, while listening to Mozart and chatting on the cellphone with two people in two different states, one about a horror/romance story we are writing/revising together on the netbook and the other a friend going through a tough time with his sex addiction.

My World. Saturday Afternoon Edition.

The chat chairs are for now parked in the corner nearest me, angled so you can talk but not at 90 degrees. In between the chairs sits a small square table, topped with concrete--pea green full of dull gray color chips. Very sturdy. Ugly as hell.

My seat faces all that, far enough away to not be involved.

In the one chat chair, slouched as far down as she can without sliding off on the floor, is a Tearful Blue-Eyed Blonde, suburban girl in gray sweat pants, white tee and ear buds plugged into her phone. From her conversation conducted at not-private volume, she identifies herself as a high school senior talking to her mother. Conversation centers on which college she will be required to attend. Mother works at one college, daughter is desperate to attend another. School starts in less than a month.

The other chair is occupied by a short-bearded, clean, young, 300-pound black man who apparently lives in the ten year old Pontiac parked in the parking lot within sight of where he sits. He is quiet, odor-free and reads a section of the USA Today that is piled in disarray on the square sturdy-but-ugly concrete table.

World Peace in Miniature.

And then a minivan pulls up, parks in the Cripple Spot.

She Who Will Not Be Named, her four-footed cane and cloth shopping bag exit the vehicle. The same She Who Requires Arms on Her Chair. She enters the store three paces and stops. Slowly she pivots her whole body and with her Best Painful Look in place surveys the store. Realization dawns that the only chairs not occupied are the little hard ones. Like the one I occupy.

So she heads my way. Nice.

I avoid. "Can you watch this?" She speaks loud enough to be heard over Mozart. I glance, unable to control myself. I am therefore required to answer and I do: a shrug and a face like I just tasted some very bitter coffee. She smiles sweet, drops her bag about a foot from my chair. I feel the need to yank my foot away but I resist. I'm wearing flip flops.